Gunawardena
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Gunawardena is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Sri Lanka than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 93K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 1.9M
- LKSri Lanka≈1 in 1.1K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Sri Lanka (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 115 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.1K (inferred from the name graph)
≈21,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Sri Lanka, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gunawardena counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LK Sri Lanka | #166 | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Gunawardena | 73 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈270 est. | ≈1 in 93K | — | Gunawardena | 69 |
| US United States | — | 174 | 1 in 1.9M | 194 | Gunawardena | 115 |
| IN India | — | ≈100 est. | ≈1 in 13M | — | Gunawardena | 9 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈77 est. | ≈1 in 851K | — | Gunawardena | 50 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | — | ≈42 est. | ≈1 in 241K | — | Gunawardena | 9 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈16 est. | ≈1 in 301K | — | Gunawardena | 5 |
| BH Bahrain | — | ≈11 est. | ≈1 in 139K | — | Gunawardena | 3 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Philip Gunawardenab. 1901LKSri Lankan politician (1901–1972)
- Dinesh Gunawardenab. 1949LKPrime Minister of Sri Lanka, 2022–2024
- Jeremy Gunawardenab. 1955GBprofessor, systems biology
- Sajin Vass Gunawardenab. 1973LKMember of Parliament of Sri Lanka
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 14 sources across 6 countries.
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- In which country does Gunawardena have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 21 thousand people named Gunawardena in Sri Lanka, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gunawardena.
- How common is the name Gunawardena?
- In the United States, the national register counted 174 people named Gunawardena in 2010, about 1 in 1.9 million residents.
- How common is Gunawardena compared with other names?
- In Sri Lanka, Gunawardena is the 166th most common surname of 20,196 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Gunawardena?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/gunawardenaThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Gunawardena” — the 166th most common surname in Sri Lanka. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.